Zombie Woman

Gordy was cursing himself for not stopping at the last gas station. He thought he had enough gas to go a little farther and then stop for the night and gas up at the same time. Now here he was walking on a back road in Louisiana, hoping to get a ride to a gas station. And he hadn’t see a vehicle on the road since he began walking.

‘Dammit to Hell,” he said to no one in particular. He had been walking for about an hour and was getting a little tired. He decided to take a break before continuing on. He stopped and sat down in the middle of the road. Digging around in his inside jacket pocket he found the joint he rolled before leaving his bike. He took out his Ronson lighter and lit up.

He had taken a couple of tokes when he heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. He quickly put out the joint and returned it to his pocket and stood up. After a moment or so he saw a VW bus coming down the road headed toward him. It was going slow and as it got closer, he saw that it was painted with a psychedelic paint scheme with flowers plastered all over it.

‘Bunch of fucking hippies,’ he thought with disgust.

Music was blaring from the bus and as it got closer he began waving it down. The bus slowed down even more and finally came to a stop beside Gordy.

“Hey mon, wat you doin’ walkin’?” said the driver who was apparently Haitian.

“Yeah, my bike ran out of gas a ways back, do you think you could give me a ride to a gas station?”

“Sure mon, we give you a ride! Kathy, get in de back with Rob dere and make room for our friend here.”

A blonde headed girl scrambled into the rear part of the bus, vacating the passenger seat. Gordy climbed into the seat and was nearly overwhelmed with the stench of unwashed bodies.

“Wat’s your name mon?” asked the driver.

“Gordy.”

“Hey Gordy, welcome to de magic bus! I’m Bob, dat’s Kathy, Rob, Phil, Jackie, Tracy, Joel and Chris in de back dere. You got any ganja?”

“What?”

“You know, weed, pot, grass. I can smell it on you mon, you been tokin’ recently huh?”

The van had already lurched into motion or Gordy would have considered getting out and walking. One of the girls and a guy in the back were making out, seemingly oblivious to the others.

“Well, I do have the remains of a joint here,” he said.

Gordy produced his Ronson, lit the joint and passed it to Bob who toked it hard enough to burn half of what was left before passing it to the group in the back. It never made it’s way back to the front of the bus.

“Dat’s some good weed, mon, got any more?”

“Nope, sorry. That’s all I had.”

“Dat’s okay mon, we get you some gas pretty soon. Dere’s a station up at de Zombie Crossing.”

“Zombie Crossing? Is that a township?”

“No, no, mon. No township. No law out dere. Dere’s a gas station, a grocery and de Juju woman’s house. Dat’s all dats dere.”

‘Yeah right,’ thought Gordy. ‘You’re the only fuckin’ zombies around this place.’

It was beginning to get dark when they came to the crossroads. Just as Bob had said, there were only a few buildings there, one of which was a gas station. The bus rattled up toward the pump and Gordy got out, glad to get a breath of fresh air.

Gordy was walking over to the door of the gas station when he noticed a couple of guys walking, kinda stiffly toward the bus. He went on inside and gave the proprietor five dollars for some gas and a small plastic container. As he started back out, he heard screaming, coming from the bus. The side doors were open and the two guys he saw earlier appeared to be attacking the kids in the back.

‘I’m not gonna get involved,’ he thought, ‘let the hippies learn to fight, it’ll do ‘em good to grow a pair.’

He started filling the container with gas when one of the girls let out a particularly loud and horrifying screech.

‘Not gonna get involved,’ he kept thinking.

He finished filling the container and turned to go toward the bus. That’s when he noticed that the two guys were moving toward him in their unusual shuffling manner. He noticed their skin had a gray pallor and patches of skin had been peeled from their faces. Looking past them, he saw several of the hippies lying on the ground, bleeding. Bob was not in sight.

“What the fuck is going on here? You best hold it right there! I’m not like those guys there, I’ll pop a cap in your ass!”

Quick as a flash, he produced his Erma Werke .380 Luger and pointed it right at the head of the nearest one. He didn’t slow down, just kept coming.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three shots to the head and that one slowed a little more, but kept coming on.

“Shit!”

He turned and went back to the door but the owner had shut and barred it, he couldn’t get inside now.

Looking around he saw an old brush hook leaning against the wall. Dropping the gas container, he picked it up and turned around to see the one he shot closing on him. He swung it in a hard horizontal arc, striking the thing just above the shoulder. The head flew off and the body dropped to the ground. He moved to get the container and the other swiped at him, narrowly missing him. Grabbing the container he rushed back toward the bus. He saw several more of the creatures shuffling toward him from beyond the van.

That’s when he heard it. A soft chuckling coming from the darkness just in front of the bus.

He couldn’t see her, but he could hear her taunting laugh. He began to run, but everywhere he went there were zombies waiting to attack him. He noticed they followed him where ever he went so he began to dodge around the gas pump. He hacked off an arm or two to avoid being penned in and kept running around. The woman’s laugh was getting louder and louder.

“You just gonna die tired! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

On his next pass of the pump he took the nozzle off and locked it wide open allowing gas to spill out on the ground. A couple more turns around the pump and he had quite a few of them crowded around it.

He took out his Ronson, struck it up and threw it into the gasoline that had pooled around the pump.

WWWHHHOOOOMMMM!

The explosion knocked him down and singed his hair and clothes. He got up quickly and saw that many of the zombies were down and on fire and the ones still up were wandering aimlessly around. He could now see the woman who had been taunting him too.

The Luger came out again and with three shots to her ugly face, she was down. Seems like bullets had a more detrimental effect on her than on her undead pets. The fire was spreading toward the bus and he ran for it, hoping the keys were in the ignition. They were.

He hopped in and started it up and headed back down the road, running over the woman’s body and a couple of zombies in the process. One of the rear wheels of the bus was on fire and it soon blew out as he sped back down the road. He continued on the three good wheels and the rim of the one that blew out.

He finally got back to his bike an hour later. That’s when he realized he left the container of gas back at the station. He rummaged around in the van and found a few beer cans, took out his pocket knife and punched a hole in the gas tank of the bus and drained some gas into the beer cans. He then put that gas into the bike.

He got on the bike and kicked the engine over several times before the carburetor got primed and then it fired right up. Taking one last look back in the direction of the Crossing, the night sky seemed to glow a little and he thought he saw someone or something back down the road shambling toward him.

He put the bike in gear and sped off down the road away from the nightmare behind him.